Photographing Domestic Violence

Editor's note: This video contains images that may be disturbing or distressing to some viewers.

Donna Ferrato has an ethnographic approach to photography, and for more than 30 years she has been forming relationships with women and asking to document the violence they endure in the home. “We're living in a home that should be our sanctuary, and it's like living in a war zone,” she says in this short film, I Am Unbeatable. “It's been meeting women like this that I've started to understand how deep the psychology is to accept abuse.” Over the decades, Ferrato’s phone has become a hotline for battered women—and her photography is a medium to ask these same women why they stay, and encourage them to leave and save themselves.